


Instant Wish Fulfillment

by wanderlustlover



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” Chin asks, with a smile, shoving a cell phone in his pocket. The first words that greet Steve as the front door slides open and changes hands between them to slide closed. It and them whisper quiet in the half lit living room strewn with streamers, balloons, a staircase banner, and what looks like piles of odd shaped glitter on the living room table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instant Wish Fulfillment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alemara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/gifts).



> Inspiration at the bottom, so it doesn't spoil any of the reading.

“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” Chin asks, with a smile, shoving a cell phone in his pocket. The first words that greet Steve as the front door slides open and changes hands between them to slide closed. It and them whisper quiet in the half lit living room strewn with streamers, balloons, a staircase banner, and what looks like piles of odd shaped glitter on the living room table.

“How far are they now?” Steve managed to ask, but no sooner than the words got out he could hear the first cheerful, discordant line of _Happy birthday to you_ starting, more shouted than sung. All of it sending him striding fast forward, on heavy worn boots, before Chin could answer. 

He made it to the wall dividing the empty living room and the crowded dinning room. The room full of bright lights, and a good two or three dozen people, he’s looking across a before finding Danny. Latching on to him for the pass of seconds that feel like ages. Breaking at something in his chest like a ship sailing into an iceberg, melting away at those hard, sharp edges that had been necessary but weren’t anymore. 

Gaze hooking on Danny’s broad smile, and effusive singing with wide raised hands, just before those eyes flick to him, sudden and solid as a key twisting in a lock. Blue, _blue_ eyes, heavy around the edges with bags, in a way that makes Steve feel every single day of the last month and half. Makes him feel as though that breath he watches Danny drag in his mouth, surprise and disbelief, forgetting to sing a few words, is dragged right out of Steve’s chest. 

It’s a miracle even five years later. The way Danny broadens like someone punched a fifteen-pound weight off his shoulders suddenly. When Steve knows now, beyond a doubt, that it’s more that he’s home than it is that he’s taking running Five-0 from off his hands. When even though Steve’s raising a finger to his lips, to keep the secret a second longer, Danny drives back into the singing _Happy birthday, dear Gracie!_ like he’s drunk on light. 

Kono knocking into Steve’s vision as she’s throwing an arm around Danny’s shoulder while giving Steve a bright, wide smile without any pause to the words she’s shouting out, horribly off key, along with everyone else. Steve wants to laugh. This glorious thing building in his chest, that has nothing on the endless sleep deprivation or running on too little for too long for all the right reasons.

He wants to laugh in a way he hasn’t in weeks. Hasn’t had a reason to, or been in a place made for it. But he doesn’t have the time, and he needs the stealth of surprise. The last strains of _Happy birthday to you_ following themselves up with several younger voices yelling “Make a wish!” and “You can do it! All in one breath!” and “Happy sweet sixteen!” 

Striding in and toward her side, to sudden collection of small gasps, but he’s not looking at anyone. Coming up on her side, fast and direct, while she waits this bare pause, before bending down to blow out her candles. A wash of long brown hair all around her shoulders, long and silky everywhere, so much like Rachel even with the tried and true Hawaii gold to her skin, when he’s dropping down to place a kiss on her head just after all the candles go out. 

Feeling it the moment she’s confused, and having to look up to one side, at him. Knowing what she’s seeing through her eyes. The confusion and recognition of him standing there suddenly, still in his desert camo, not even stopped anywhere long enough for a shower or a shave in the last thirty hours. Nothing as important as getting home, getting to here, because he refused to be too late.

The way her eyes widen with so much surprise but none of the able patience of her _Danno_ , because where Danny could handle the other side of the room, Grace shrieks, throws her head into his stomach and her arms around his waist, crushing the heavy loose fabric to him. Barely there a second, before she surging up from her chair and into his arms, hugging him, with the word “Dad!” getting smothered into the front of his shirt. 

It’s odd the things he thinks in those seconds. Little reminders Danny tells him. That he should prize these seconds, because she’s getting older and she won’t do this as much at all one day what with how she’s growing up. Doesn’t even do it as much now as she did when she was ten or eleven and threw herself into their arms and laps. 

Especially not in front of her closest friends, Five-0, Rachel and Stan and Charles. 

Having a daughter was not something in the plan for Steve’s life. He never factored it in. He never dreamed about. Never took the time to consider it ever needing to be prioritized as part of his future when he was an up and coming name in the ranks. But that doesn’t make it any less true, that when she’s pulling back, looking up at his face, like she can’t be buried in him long enough to let his face disappear any longer than it had. “I can’t believe you made it!”

“I promised you, didn’t I?” The words are brash and broad, arrogant and bragging, like there’s no other way in the world. Didn’t he just prove that again. It’s an indelible part of his world now. Their world. Grace. Grace being his daughter. Knowing in the small pause of her smile there before she’s throwing herself into hugging him again, that this might have been a great day, but it had been there. 

A weight in her sweet sixteen birthday, as much as a shadow clinging around Danny. That he might not make it. Two calls in six weeks as it was, over what had originally been assigned as a two week reserves assignment. That she knows what he does and how important it is, and how sometimes it outweighs the places he’d rather be. But today he managed to make it again. 

Knows he did the right thing, pushing through the night, red eye flights and stand-by cargo passage. Because his daughter, just turned sixteen, is pulling back from him, one hand still looped possessively on his arm like he isn't still at least a third taller than her and able to take out things twice his own size. Like he's a harmless pet and not a dangerous machine. But there she goes, starting to call to her guests for where the knife is to cut the cake. 

Leaving him to laugh and find Danny across the room again. Watching them with the kind of exasperated pride and love at a lifetime of near miss, last second save, miracles that he has nothing but relieved faith in it that Steve managed just in the nick of time again.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following graphic [from Tumblr](http://mycartoonheartvstheworld.tumblr.com/post/60136423968/sluttyoliveoil-instant-wish-gratification), which Laura passed off to me:
> 
>  


End file.
